Washington, D.C. (Ali Vitali/NBC News) — Multiple media outlets were blocked from a White House media briefing Friday afternoon.
There was no planned on-camera daily briefing by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer when Friday’s schedule was released Thursday night, but the original guidance read that there would be a gaggle in the briefing room. Around noon, the White House updated that guidance, scuttling the gaggle to off-camera with the “expanded pool.”
The White House emailed previously selected reporters that they were okayed to attend.
While representatives from NBC News, CBS, ABC, and FOX were allowed into the off-camera briefing, CNN was not.
Buzzfeed, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Politico were among the other outlets not allowed in to cover the gaggle, with representatives from the Associated Press and Time declining to go into the gaggle because of how it was being handled.
White House Correspondents Association President Jeff Mason emailed members that the board “is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House.”
“We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff,” the email read.
During the briefing in question Spicer was asked about why certain outlets were not present. He said it was because the gaggle was an “expanded pool” and he made that decision.
The move comes after Trump doubled down on Friday on his criticism of American mainstream media calling them “the enemy of the American People” during his speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
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